Flannery O’Connor & Racism, Part 2
Down on the Farm

5,555 words

(Part 1 here)

After coming down with lupus, the disease that ultimately killed her, Flannery O’Connor spent the last 13 years of her life living with her mother Regina O’Connor on a family farm named Andalusia.

At first it was a dairy farm, then a beef farm, but throughout Flannery’s tenure it was also a “bird sanctuary,” swarming with Flannery’s chickens, ducks, geese, pheasants, and signature peacocks.

Flannery documents her life at Andalusia in her correspondence, her essay “The King of the Birds,” and such stories as “Greenleaf,” “Good Country People,” “A Circle in the Fire,” “The Displaced Person,” “The Enduring Chill,” and “Revelation.”[1] As we will see, O’Connor’s letters make it clear that she uses actual characters, events, and even conversations from Andalusia as material for her stories.[2]

O’Connor’s views about race were shaped by her dealings with blacks on the family farm. This is acknowledged, somewhat regretfully, by O’Connor’s close friend Sally Fitzgerald, who edited The Habit of Being, the first and as yet the largest collection of O’Connor’s letters. In her Introduction, Fitzgerald writes: “The blacks on the O’Connor farm were as primitive as some of the whites she wrote about, and they perhaps served as trees obscuring her view of the social forest. Certainly they sometimes vexed her sorely.”[3]

Let’s meet some of the blacks in Flannery O’Connor’s life based on her letters as well as clues provided by four stories that prominently feature blacks on a farm clearly based on Andalusia: “A Circle in the Fire,” “The Displaced Person,” “The Enduring Chill,” and “Revelation.” (Blacks don’t appear in “Good Country People” and only work on another farm in “Greenleaf.”)

Meet the Help

In a letter to Ward Dorrance dated November 3rd, 1963, O’Connor introduces the blacks who lived at Andalusia:

We’ve got a very 19th-century operation here. Three colored people live here in what was the guest house to this house—Louise and Jack, husband wife, and Shot, their boarder. Louise and Shot work for us, Jack up the road. The guest house was right next to ours but Regina and a Negro named George Harper put it on telephone poles about 20 years ago and rolled it out of earshot (a two-story house itself) but not out of sight. Now we are connected to it by an electric bell. The bell is for us, if we get scared, to call them, but more often it rings over here. It rang last week and Shot came stomping over to say Louise was drunk and had thrown potash water on him. He brings her the liquor and then comes running over here when she goes wild, which she every so often [does]. We’ve had these Negroes going on fifteen years. Regina gave her a lecture the next day, saying that one of these days she was going to put his eyes out. “Yes’m,” Louise says, “I hope I gets at least one of them.”[4] She stays mad with him about a day.

Regina’s big aim is to stop the flow of liquor in here, but I tell her she might as well try to stop the Mississippi from rolling on. She gives them all sorts of lectures about how nice folks do and when they are about to kill each other, she says, “Now let’s not have any more of this unpleasantness. Bring that shotgun over here and leave it.” . . . She listens to their lies very seriously, and I mean they lie like artists. It’s never a matter of finding the truth but of which lie suits you the best [in] the moment to accept in its place.[5]

Louise and Jack had the surname Hill. O’Connor gives Shot’s name as Willie Shot Manson.[6] It is not clear if Shot is part of his legal name or just a nickname. (Surely Willie was not his legal name.) Although all three blacks are mentioned in four volumes of O’Connor’s correspondence, none of their names appear in the indexes.

In a letter to Betty Hester from May 19th, 1956, O’Connor mentions another Negro on the farm:

The two colored people in “The Displaced Person” are on this place now. The old man [named Astor in the story] is 84 but vertical or more or less so. He doesn’t see too good and the other day he fertilized some of my mother’s bulbs with worm medicine for the calves. I can only see them from the outside. I wouldn’t have the courage of miss Shirley Ann Grau to go inside their heads.[7]

O’Connor does not give the old man’s name. In a letter to Mrs. Rumsey Haynes from December 13th, 1956, O’Connor mentions “Henry (the 86-year-old yardman)” planting some new tulip bulbs.[8] Although the ages do not match (the same man could not have gone from 84 to 86 in six months), they are probably the same person. O’Connor probably does not mention Henry in her 1963 letter to Dorrance because he had since died. (In 1963, he would have been 91 or 93.)

According to the letter to Dorrance, the blacks at Andalusia were conspicuously violent, drunken, and dishonest. This is corroborated by other letters. Elsewhere in her correspondence, O’Connor characterizes the blacks on the farm as irresponsible, stupid, lazy, and tasteless. We will deal with each of these claims in turn.

Violence

Several letters document violent incidents involving Shot and Louise.

O’Connor discusses Shot’s violence (and stupidity) in a letter to Caroline Gordon dated February 8th, 1954:

The D.P. [Displaced Person, a Polish refugee working at Andalusia] and Shot nearly choked each other in the wagon the other day and now my mother is almost afraid to send them to the field together for fear one won’t come back. She gave him a long lecture that night through Alfred, the twelve-year-old boy [the Displaced Person’s son]. She kept saying, “You tell your father that he’s a gentleman, that I KNOW he’s a gentleman and that gentleman don’t fight with poor negroes like Shot that don’t have any sense.” . . . She was very successful in communicating with Shot, however. “Now Shot,” she said, “you are very intelligent. You are much too intelligent to fight with a man that we can’t understand very well, now you know you are above this. . . .” He agreed with every word but said that Mr. Matysiak had hit him first.[9]

Apparently, Regina eventually took a dislike to the Displaced Person,[10] and when she interviewed a replacement, she emphasized that “she wasn’t going to hire anybody who would hit her Negroes in the head.”[11] Of course, that still does not imply that Mr. Matysiak struck first.

In a letter to Fannie Cheney dated December 28th, 1958, O’Connor writes:

One of the negroes [Jack] bought himself a gun for Christmas apparently for the pleasure of threatening his wife [Louise]. She came over the other night and said she was scaird to go home because he had promised to git her. My mother had to induce him to bring the gun over here to spend the night. She also delivered a sermon on thou shalt not kill during the Christmas time, which was touching and had some effect.[12]

In another letter to Fannie Cheney dated April 10th, 1959, O’Connor writes:

The negroes got in a big full [sic] Wednesday night and Regina had to ask Jack to hand over his switchblade knife so she would know he wasn’t going to put it into any of the rest of them. He always hands his weapons over very docilely. Then my mother says “Let’s not have any more unpleasantness tonight,” and they go off. All near killings she refers to as “unpleasantness.”[13]

In a letter to both Cheneys dated April 25th, 1959, O’Connor mentions that Regina “averted several unpleasantnesses while I was gone and the staff seems to be doing as well as usual.”[14]

In a letter to Cecil Dawkins from October 31st, 1959, O’Connor writes: “We had a big cutting here Sunday and three stitches had to be taken in Shot’s head, but all is peaceful now.”[15]

In a letter to Ashley Brown from February 13th, 1961, O’Connor writes: “Louise recently stuck an ice pick in Shot but otherwise we go on our peaceful way around here.”[16]

Clearly, when O’Connor refers to doing “well” and things being “peaceful,” she is speaking ironically or at least relatively. Life at Andalusia was rife with violence and danger, and I cannot believe that Regina and Flannery never feared that someday that violence might have been turned against them. But if the thought had crossed their minds, why on Earth did they continue to suffer the danger? Why didn’t they send the blacks away?

Drunkenness

Several other letters document the drunkenness of the blacks at Andalusia. In a letter to Betty Hester from January 7th, 1960, O’Connor writes: “The African contingent here celebrated the holidays by staying drunk throughout them.”[17] Exactly one year later, O’Connor wrote to Lon and Fannie Cheney that, “We hope you all had a good Christmas. All the African contingent here celebrated long and furiously and are just now sobering up with the help of some words of warning of my mother’s.”[18] In a letter to Louise and Tom Gossett from April 10th, 1961, O’Connor writes: “My mother is getting ready to sell out the dairy and go into beef cows. We are being done in by the local moonshine. The staff is non compos mentis every weekend and she has had enough.”[19] In a letter to Betty Hester from October 14th, 1961, O’Connor writes: “Louise has been drunk for the past two Mondays.”[20] In a letter to Betty Hester dated December 9th, 1961, O’Connor tells of Louise getting drunk, disappearing for two days, and being unable to give a “clear account of herself” upon her return.[21]

Dishonesty

In a letter to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald from May 7th, 1962, O’Connor writes:

Everything is in fine shape here since we are no longer in the dairy bidnis. Shot is still incapacitated so we get along with Jack and Louise, but Jack took off last week and stayed all week. He came back this morning, having been beat up at the Negro juke joint. Regina asked him where he had been and he said he had been plowing for a crippled man and he went because he knew the Lord would bless her for doing without him for the week. She said the Lord would have blessed me just the same if you had told me you were going. Around here it is not even a matter of finding the truth but of deciding which lie you live with better.[22]

In a letter to Thomas Stritch from July 4th, 1963, O’Connor writes:

Shot was at the back door early this morning to say he had a cousin who died last Friday and he must be off for the funeral today. He’ll spend it riding up and down the road with the bad crowd that lives across the way and we also heard that they are going to barbecue a goat over there. R [Regina] let him go after giving a Jonathan Edwards-type sermon and letting him know she didn’t accept the cousin story. He does love bad company.[23]

The Worth of Negro Flattery

In “The Enduring Chill” and “Revelation,” O’Connor pens comic dialogues in which the attempts of whites to converse with blacks are derailed by inane black insincerity.

In “The Enduring Chill,” Asbury Fox, a failed writer, has returned from New York to his mother’s dairy farm because he has come down with what he assumes is a deadly disease. This parallels O’Connor’s return to Andalusia in 1951 when her lupus first flared up. The two blacks who work on the Fox farm are Randall, an older man (perhaps corresponding to Astor in “The Displaced Person”), and Morgan, a younger man (perhaps corresponding to Sulk in “The Displaced Person” and perhaps also to Shot on Andalusia.)

Asbury is a progressive: a racial egalitarian and integrationist. He wanted to write a play about Negroes in the South. As research, he asked to work with Randall and Morgan in the dairy. He assumed that since all people are really equal, that it would be easy enough to bridge their differences and build rapport. But he found it very difficult and quickly became frustrated: “When they said anything to him, it was as if they were speaking to an invisible body located to the right or left of where he actually was . . .”[24]

Asbury tried to break down their reserve by offering them cigarettes, which were forbidden by Mrs. Fox because they ruined the milk. They accepted. Then he tried to curry both favor and rebellion by breaking another of Mrs. Fox’s rules: he drank unpasteurized milk and encouraged the blacks to join him. They refused.

This was a good thing, because as we later learn, Asbury’s illness is undulant fever, which he caught from the milk. The good news is that it won’t kill him, but it will be a chronic condition for the rest of his life. Like most progressives, Asbury thinks that rules are merely there to oppress not protect them.

While Asbury thinks he is going to die, he asks his mother to bring Randall and Morgan to his bedside so he can say goodbye. He imagines they have some sort of relationship, whereas for the blacks this is just an awkward imposition. His mother thinks the request is daft, but she humors him.

“Here’s Randall and Morgan,” his mother said, ushering them in. “They’ve come to tell you hello.”

The two of them came in grinning and shuffled to the side of the bed. They stood there, Randall in front and Morgan behind. “You sho do look well,” Randall said. “You looks very well.”

“You looks well,” the other one said. “Yessuh, you looks fine.”

“I ain’t ever seen you looking so well before,” Randall said.

. . .

“Yessuh,” Randall said, “I speck you ain’t even sick.”

. . . “I’m dying,” he said.

Both their grins became gelid. “You looks fine,” Randall said.

“I’m going to die,” Asbury repeated. Then with relief he remembered that they were going to smoke together. He reached for the package on the table and held it out to Randall, forgetting to shake out the cigarettes.

The Negro took the package and put it in his pocket. “I thank you,” he said. “I certainly do preciate it.”

Asbury stared as if he had forgotten again. After a second he became aware that the other Negro’s face had turned infinitely sad; then he realized that it was not sad but sullen. He fumbled in the drawer of the table and pulled out an unopened package and thrust it at Morgan.

“I thanks you, Mist Asbury,” Morgan said, brightening. “You certainly does look well.”

“I’m about to die,” Asbury said irritably.

“You looks fine,” Randall said

“You be up and around in a few days,” Morgan predicted. Neither of them seemed to find a suitable place to rest his gaze.[25]

In “Revelation,” Mrs. Ruby Turpin runs a farm with her husband Claud. She was assaulted in a doctor’s waiting room by a surly college girl named Mary Grace, who hurled a book in her face then tried to strangle her. When Mrs. Turpin returned to the farm, one of her Negro farm workers noticed the bruise on her face caused by the book and thought she had fallen.

“No. I didn’t fall down,” she said, folding her arms. “It was something worse than that.”

“Ain’t nothing bad happened to you!” the old woman said. She said it as if they all knew that Mrs. Turpin was protected in some special way by Divine Providence. “You just had you a little fall.”

“We were in town at the doctor’s office for where the cow kicked Mr. Turpin,” Mrs. Turpin said in a flat voice that indicated they could leave off their foolishness. “And there was this girl there. A big fat girl with her face all broke out. I could look at that girl and tell she was peculiar but I couldn’t tell how. And me and her mama were just talking and going along and all of a sudden WHAM! she throws this big book she was reading at me and . . .”

“Naw!” the old woman cried out.

“And then she jumps over the table and commences to choke me.”

“Naw!” they all exclaimed, “naw!”

. . .

“What she say?” they asked

“She said,” Mrs. Turpin began, stopped, her face very dark and heavy. . . . She could not bring forth the words. “Something real ugly,” she muttered.

“She sho shouldn’t said nothin ugly to you,” the old woman said. “You’re so sweet. You’re the sweetest lady I know.”

“She pretty too,” the one with the hat on said.

“And stout,” the other one said. “I never knowed no sweeter white lady.”

“That’s the truth befo’ Jesus,” the old woman said. “Amen! You des as sweet and pretty as you can be.”

Mrs. Turpin knew exactly how much Negro flattery was worth and it added to her rage. “She said,” she began again and finished this time with a fierce rush of breath, “that I was an old wart hog from hell.”

There was an astounded silence.

“Where she at?” the youngest woman cried in a piercing voice.

“Let me see her! I’ll kill her!”

“I’ll kill her with you!” the other one cried.

“She b’long in the sylum,” the old woman said emphatically. “You the sweetest white lady I know.”

“She pretty too,” the other two said. “Stout as she can be and sweet. Jesus satisfied with her!”

“Deed he is,” the old woman declared.

Idiots! Mrs. Turpin growled to herself. You could never say anything intelligent to a nigger. You could talk at them but not with them.[26]

It is likely that O’Connor regularly observed such interactions at Andalusia. O’Connor recognized that manners, and perhaps even a bit of flattery, were necessary for good social relations. Her objection to this sort of inane Negro flattery is that it does the opposite: it is infuriating because it is transparently insincere, which means that as a social relations strategy it is just stupid. Manners are a social virtue. Negro flattery is a vice.

Stupidity & Irresponsibility

Shot’s irresponsibility is illustrated in a letter to Caroline Gordon from December 15th, 1953:

The D.P. [Displaced Person] is currently telling Shot, the colored man, that he can get him a wife from Germany but that he’ll have to pay five hundred dollars for her. My mother says, “Oh get out Mr. Matysiak, you know all those folks over there are white.” [This episode was worked into “The Displaced Person,” where the black who is promised a wife is named Sulk.] She [Regina] has had a lot of trouble anyway with Shot’s matrimonial complications. He is estranged from his first wife who used to have him put in jail every month because he wouldn’t support his child. My mother finally after paying his bond several times had it arranged so that she sends the check for the child every month—twelve dollars. She was talking to his mother the other day and told her that she was mighty tired of having to be Shot’s bookkeeper (she also pays his [insurance] policy man, his board, and his incidental debts). His mother said well she wished he’d go back to his wife and then he wouldn’t have to send out that twelve dollars every month period. My mother says why you know that woman doesn’t want him back. “Oh yesm she do,” his mother said, “she wants him worsen a hog wants slop.” I happened to be present and nearly fell off my chair. But my mother didn’t bat an eye until the old woman had gone, and she said, “I hope you’re not going to use that in one of those stories.” Of course I am as soon as I can find me a place to.[27]

In “The Displaced Person,” the farm-owner, Mrs. McIntyre (based on Regina O’Connor) scolds the Displaced Person, Mr. Guizac, for trying to arrange a marriage between his sixteen-year-old cousin (a Polish refugee in Germany) and Sulk: “Mr. Guizac! You would bring this poor innocent child over here to marry her to a half-witted thieving black stinking nigger! What kind of monster are you?”[28] Later in the same exchange, she says of Sulk: “That nigger don’t have a grain of sense . . .”[29] If Sulk is more or less based on Shot, then it is reasonable to think this is more or less what O’Connor thought of Shot.

In a letter to Betty Hester from June 10th, 1961, O’Connor describes an accident on the farm involving Shot:

We had an awful accident here Thursday. Shot was sucked into the hay bailer up to his elbows. It was sometime before he could be got out and he is pretty badly damaged but lucky to be alive. It didn’t break any of his bones, but tore out some big gaps of flesh and gave him several third degree belt burns. Regina and Lon Cheney, who was here at the time, stayed with him until the mechanic could come to get him out of the machine and the doctor could come. Then they took him to the hospital in her car and the doctor says he will be in there for some time. Of course he was fooling with the motor on—something she has told him 1000 times not to do. We were used to minor crises but this was major.[30]

O’Connor clearly believes the accident was due to Shot’s stupidity and irresponsibility.

In a follow-up letter to Betty Hester from August 19th, 1961, O’Connor writes: “Shot is still in the hospital. What he will be able to do when he gets out is a moot question. He has had his skin grafts so he should not be in there much longer. We don’t have much use of his left arm, but it’s possible that it will improve in time.”[31]

In a letter to Betty Hester from September 16th, 1961, O’Connor writes: “Shot has been restored to us and our troubles have begun. He can’t do anything yet and so he sits and decides what he is going to do with the wealth he has accumulated from his accident. This is a very demoralizing situation. A wealthy sitting negro.”[32]

In another follow-up letter to Betty Hester from October 28th, 1961, we get a sense of why O’Connor dreaded Shot’s idleness: “We hear, via the grapevine, that Shot is going to sue us. Jack says, ‘I ain’t so dumb, Miss, some nigger is putting him up to that.’ Shot hasn’t said anything about it himself but he avoids us; sleeps all day and prowls all night. Regina consulted the insurance man and he said Shot couldn’t sue us because he had accepted the compensation insurance.”[33]

Shot’s accident and recovery are also mentioned in O’Connor’s letters to the Cheneys.[34]

Shot was also illiterate. He could not read the questions for his driver’s exam, and Regina O’Connor had to read him the questions and mark down his answers for him. He was not very intelligent—he apparently thought 40 miles per hour was faster than 55—so it took him several attempts to pass it.[35]

Laziness

We have already seen O’Connor’s letter to Betty Hester from June 27th, 1964, where she describes Louise’s laziness during the month Regina and Flannery were away due to Flannery’s hospitalization in Atlanta, as well as her insincerity upon their return:

You asked what was done when we came back. Nothing. We left in a hurry without washing the tops of the breakfast pans or the coffee pot and everything was exactly like we left it. Rip Van Winkle didn’t have it any different. Not even a glass of ice water to hand. Dust everywhere. The refrigerator full of rotten food. And Louise bowing & scraping and carrying on about how much she had missed us. Regina had told her hurriedly to take care of everything but nothing specific. Anyway even if she had it wouldn’t have done any good. They had a months’ vacation with pay. I sho am sick of niggers.[36]

The Negro Work Ethic

In “A Circle in the Fire” and “The Displaced Person,” O’Connor depicts the black farm workers as lazy. In “The Displaced Person,” she also depicts them as thieving.

In “A Circle in the Fire,” the farm is owned by Mrs. Cope. Mrs. Pritchard works on the farm with her husband.

. . . [Mrs. Pritchard’s] voice was drowned out by the sound of the tractor that the Negro, Culver, was driving up the road from the barn. . . .

Mrs. Cope turned her head and saw that he had not gone through the gate because he was too lazy to get off and open it. He was going a long way round at her expense. “Tell him to stop and come here!” she shouted.

Mrs. Pritchard heaved herself from the chimney and waved her arm in a fierce circle but he pretended not to hear. She stalked to the edge of the lawn and screamed, “Get off, I tolyer! She wants you!”

He got off and started toward the chimney, pushing his head and shoulders forward at each step to give the appearance of hurrying. . . .

Mrs. Cope was on her knees pointing the trowel into the ground. “Why aren’t you going through the gate there?” she asked and waited, her eyes shut and her mouth stretched flat as if she were prepared for any ridiculous answer.

“Got to raise the blade on the mower if we do,” he said and his gaze bore just to the left of her. Her Negroes were as destructive and impersonal as the nut grass.[37]

Later, when a fire breaks out on the farm, Mrs. Cope rouses Culver and another Negro to help fight it:

“Hurry, hurry!” she [Mrs. Cope] shouted. “Start throwing dirt on it!” The Negroes passed her almost without looking at her and headed off slowly across the field toward the smoke. She ran after them a little way, shrilling, “Hurry, hurry! Don’t you see it! Don’t you see it!”

“It’ll be there when we git there,” Culver said and they thrust their shoulders forward a little and went on at the same pace.[38]

In both passages, the blacks are described as disastrously lazy and lacking in initiative, even when the farm and presumably their own livelihoods are threatened with destruction. In both passages, O’Connor describes the Negroes as moving slowly but pushing their heads and shoulders forward to give the appearance of speed. It is a childish imposture that can only be regarded with contempt. I seriously doubt that this is O’Connor’s invention. She probably saw it at Andalusia.

In “The Displaced Person,” Astor and Sulk are introduced as hiding behind a mulberry tree to avoid work.[39] One day, the Displaced Person, Mr. Guizac, caught Sulk stealing a small turkey. Sulk lied about it shamelessly.

The week before, he [Mr. Guizac] had come upon Sulk at the dinner hour, sneaking with a croker sack into the pen where the young turkeys were. He had watched him take a frying-sized turkey from the lot and thrust it in the sack and put the sack under his coat. Then he had followed him around the barn, jumped on him, dragged him to Mrs. McIntyre’s back door and had acted out the entire scene for her, while the Negro muttered and grumbled and said God might strike him dead if he had been stealing any turkey, he had only been taking it to put some black shoe polish on its head because it had the sore head. God might strike him dead if that was not the truth before Jesus. Mrs. McIntyre told him to go put the turkey back and then she was a long time explaining to the Pole that all Negroes would steal.[40]

Mrs. Shortly, the wife of Mrs. McIntyre’s dairyman, defends the Negro work ethic: “You can always tell a nigger what to do and stand by until he does it,”[41] but presumably you can’t trust him to finish the job unsupervised. Mrs. McIntyre herself claimed that the blacks “lie and steal and have to be watched all the time.”[42] Part of her struggle to maintain the farm was “to meet the constant drain of a tribe of moody unpredictable Negroes.”[43] When Mr. Shortly returned to the farm, “The Negroes were pleased . . . The Displaced Person had expected them to work as hard as he worked himself, whereas Mr. shortly recognized their limitations.”[44]

Questionable Tastes

O’Connor was also somewhat contemptuous of what she clearly considered to be the bad tastes of the local Negroes. In a letter to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald from December 1st, 1957, O’Connor writes:

Our colored man, Jack, has had all his teeth pulled and is about ready now to get his new teeth. The dentist asked him what kind he wanted and he said he wanted “pearly white teeth.” The dentist asked what kind of pearly white teeth and he said, “You know, like on the handle of a gun.” He also wants some gold ones scattered through the plate. Regina has been trying to talk him out of this but he says he ain’t going to spend his money for no ordinary looking teeth.[45]

O’Connor also looked archly upon the local blacks’ culinary tastes (racoons, squirrels, and possums,[46] hoot owls and hawks[47]) as well as their techniques (“First I boils him then I bakes him”).[48]

Conclusion

Flannery O’Connor took a dim view of the blacks on the family farm. She thought they were stupid, lazy, violent, drunken, dishonest, irresponsible, and tacky. Basically, she regarded them as little more than vicious children. Even if we subtract everything she says in her stories as exaggerations, her letters amply document such beliefs. These views, moreover, were not counterbalanced with positive views. In “The Displaced Person,” O’Connor credits Astor with a certain shrewdness. At one point, he tells Sulk, “your place too low for anybody to dispute with you for it.”[49] One can legitimately speculate that this is simply O’Connor’s invention, for in her correspondence, she doesn’t have a single nice thing to say about the blacks she knew best.

It is an article of faith among liberals that racism is caused by ignorance and cured by experience. O’Connor refutes this axiom. In an unpublished letter to Maryat Lee dated May 3, 1964, O’Connor flatly states, “I don’t like negroes. They all give me a pain and the more of them I see, the less and less I like them.”[50] In truth, it is easier to have anti-racist attitudes if you have never been exposed to other races.

Given O’Connor’s low opinion of blacks, it is easy to understand why she thought the best solution to America’s race problem was to return the blacks to Africa.[51] It is harder to understand how she thought that the Civil Rights movement, which aimed to increase racial interactions, could do anything other than multiply conflict and misery that she experienced first-hand down on the farm.

Notes

[1] “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” is set on a farm with a widowed mother and her daughter, but the farm bears no resemblance to Andalusia.

[2] Cf. The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, ed. Sally Fitzgerald (New York: Farar, Straus & Giroux, 1979), p. 368.

[3] The Habit of Being, p. xvii.

[4] O’Connor repeats this story in a letter to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald from November 23rd, 1963 (The Habit of Being, p. 550).

[5] Good Things out of Nazareth: The Uncollected Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Friends, ed. Benjamin B. Alexander (New York: Convergent, 2019), pp. 286–87.

[6] The Habit of Being, p. 224.

[7] The Habit of Being, p. 159.

[8] The Habit of Being, p. 175.

[9] The letters of Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon, ed. Christine Flanagan (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2018), pp. 100–101.

[10] The Correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and the Brainard Cheneys, ed. C. Ralph Stephens (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986), p. 134.

[11] The Habit of Being, p. 208.

[12] The Correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and the Brainard Cheneys, p. 82.

[13] The Correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and the Brainard Cheneys, p. 85.

[14] The Correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and the Brainard Cheneys, p. 86.

[15] The Habit of Being, p. 356.

[16] The Habit of Being, p. 432.

[17] Good Things out of Nazareth, p. 194.

[18] The Correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and the Brainard Cheneys, p. 126.

[19] The Habit of Being, p. 438.

[20] The Habit of Being, p. 450.

[21] The Habit of Being, p. 458.

[22] The Habit of Being, p. 473.

[23] The Habit of Being, pp. 527–528.

[24] Flannery O’Connor, Collected Works, ed. Sally Fitzgerald (New York: Library of America, 1988), p. 558.

[25] Collected Works, pp. 569–70.

[26] Collected Works, pp. 649–50.

[27] The Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon, Ed. Christine Flanagan (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2018), pp. 92–93.

[28] Collected Works, p. 313.

[29] Collected Works, p. 314.

[30] The Habit of Being, p. 442.

[31] The Habit of Being, p. 448.

[32] The Habit of Being, p. 449.

[33] The Habit of Being, p. 452.

[34] The Correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and the Brainard Cheneys, pp. 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, and 154.

[35] The Habit of Being, pp. 211, 222, 224.

[36] The Habit of Being, p. 587.

[37] Collected Works, pp. 233–34.

[38] Collected Works, p. 250.

[39] Collected Works, p. 285. Cf. p. 288.

[40] Collected Works, p. 293

[41] Collected Works, p. 299.

[42] Collected Works, p. 302.

[43] Collected Works, p. 309.

[44] Collected Works, p. 319.

[45] The Habit of Being, p. 257. Cf. The Correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and the Brainard Cheneys, pp. 63–64

[46] The Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon, p. 102.

[47] The Habit of Being, pp. 540–41.

[48] The Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon, p. 102.

[49] Collected Works, p. 297.

[50] Quoted in Paul Elie, “How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?,” The New Yorker, June 15, 2020.

[51] From an unpublished letter to Maryat Lee paraphrased in Ralph C. Wood, Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2004), p. 99.